The New International Economic Order: The North-South Debate

The "north-south debate" between and within the developed and developing countries on achieving international distributive economic justice has emerged as one of the focal issues of world security and peace. The world economic order is changing, like it or not. Most discussions on the subject are distressingly uninformative, either giving blanket superficial endorsements to the demands of less developed countries or, equally superficially, condemning them out of hand. By contrast, this collection of more than a dozen articles, growing out of a workshop held at MIT in May 1975, is a real attempt to come to grips with the issues. Taken as a whole, the volume provides detailed and systematic reviews of the past history of the issues, their current status, future prospects, and economic desirability. Specific proposals are analyzed in depth, and with rigor and imagination, but without falling back on jargon or complicated mathematics. Professor Bhagwati sets the stage with an overview of the underlying political and economic factors. In the rest of the book developmental problems are covered under four headings. Section one, on resource transfers, offers essays on economic aid, income distribution, debt relief, and taxing the "brain drain." Richard Cooper discusses oceans as a source of revenue. Section two, on international trade, includes Professor Bhagwati's essay on market disruption, and C. Fred Bergsten's proposals on access to supply. Others treat trade policies and commodities. Section three, on world food problems, deals with the stability of grain in D. Gale Johnson's paper and food aid in Alexander H. Sarris's and Lance Taylor's article. Section four, on technology transfer, evaluates multinationals and direct foreign investment. The concluding essay is an extensive panel discussion on the new international economic order as a whole and numbers among the participants Harry G. Johnson, Charles Kindleberger, I. M. D. Little, and Ali Mazrui. Where there are six economists, a wag once remarked, there are apt to be seven opinions. The present book, part of the MIT Bicentennial Studies series, seeks to fashion out of typically divergent and contentious opinions viable alternatives for reforming the world economic order.